Evansville Museum shows off new entrance, theater with movies, flags and a redesigned logo | VIDEO

ERIN McCRACKEN / COURIER &amp; PRESS Jim Price, Science Specialist at the Evansville Museum of Arts History &amp; Science, demonstrates the capabilities of the new Koch Immersion Theater on Thursday January 23, 2014. The museum addition and new theater will be open on Feb. 7 at 2 p.m. The Immersion Theater will begin showing new shows, Forces of Nature, Fragile Planet and a childrenâs show, Perfect Little Planet. New shows will rotate in every three months.

The glassed-in dome of the immersive theater isn’t completely dressed yet, and the final landscaping outside awaits warmer weather, but the Evansville Museum can’t wait to show off its gleaming new atrium entrance gallery, museum shop and, most of all, its new planetarium and theater.

It won’t need to much longer.

Ceremonial satin will part, handmade flags will fly and heavenly images will envelop the 360-degree, 40-foot-wide, domed canopy screen of the new Koch Immersive Theater for Friday’s grand opening of the museum’s new 9,000-square-foot southern entrance.

Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke will snip the ribbon to officially open the sunlit new entrance at 2 p.m. Friday, in the climax of a five-year, $14.1 million Reaching for the Stars expansion project and launching a new era for the Evansville Museum.

The new entrance refocuses the entire museum, offering direct, immediate access to the new theater, the Begley Museum Shop and the Evansville Convention & Visitors Bureau Center for History and Science on the ground floor. A curving staircase wraps around the theater’s dome, arcing up to a second floor mezzanine that lead directly into the Old Gallery, the museum’s largest art exhibition space. A sweeping tapestry of sculpted acrylic panels adorns banister that winds around the dome and up onto open, second floor overlook.

And the atrium’s wall of glass looks out onto the Virginia & John H. Schroeder Plaza and EMTRAC (the Evansville Museum Transportation Center), pulling both facilities together, finally, in one unified campus overlooking the Ohio River.

Evansville residents will have a hand in decorating the museum, as well. Some 900 flags, designed and stitched by children and adults from the area, will hang in hallways and alcoves in time for the ribbon cutting, says Jennifer Roll, the fiber artist and museum trustee who came up with the idea for “Hopes and Wishes: a Community Flag Project.”

The new addition’s cornerstone, the Koch Immersive Theater, promises dazzling new opportunities to see star shows, movies and the laser-light rock music presentations featuring Pink Floyd, the Beatles and other bands, said Mitch Luman, the museum’s science director.

The dome’s exterior still awaits installation of the diamond-shaped wooden tiles that will cover its skin, but the theater inside is ready to dazzle.

With 10,000 watts of surround sound and stadium seating for 66, the theater offers unobstructed views of monumental movies and star shows beamed up in 11 million pixels onto the 40-foot-wide, 360-degree hemispherical canopy by a pair of ultrabright digital projectors.

The theater will feature five movies for adults and children. Friday’s screenings will feature two — “Fragile Planet” and “Forces of Nature.”

“Perfect Little Planet” and “Skies Over Evansville” will join the lineup, Saturday, and “One World One Sky” will move into the rotation Feb. 14.

Fragile Planet,” narrated by Sigourney Weaver, takes audiences on a tour of the heavens in search of other places suitable for life and addressed the imperative importance of preserving the biodiversity on Earth.

“Forces of Nature,” narrated by Kevin Bacon, moves in to look closely at the colossal power of earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes and natural forces.

Child-friendly, family features include “One World, One Sky: Big Bird’s Adventure,” exploring the night sky with Big Bird, Elmo and Hu Hu Zhu, a Muppet from China; and “Perfect Little Planet,” which follows a family from another planet as they explore the galaxy in search of the perfect vacation spot.

And “Skies Over Evansville” uses state-of-the-art technology and real-time computer graphics from the Museum of Natural History and NASA, to look at stars, nebula, planets, comets and asteroids.